What Does Linkedin Want?

On Linkedin & Personal Branding

When Daniel Roth was hired by Linkedin in 2011 to lead its content & community strategy, I distinctly remember thinking “wtf? that’s weird…”

Why was Linkedin — a job board (or so I thought at the time — hiring an Editor-in-Chief from Fortune Magazine?

Looking back on that now, it’s clear to see why and I’m glad they did!

Nowadays, it seems that Linkedin is doubling down even further on content & community, but also investing heavily in becoming a news outlet and de facto competitor to the PR Newswire.

I came across this interview with Laura Lorenzetti, Executive Editor at Linkedin News

In this wide-ranging Q&A, Lorenzetti shares how communicators can break through on LinkedIn — whether you’re an executive, a comms lead or building a brand. Her advice? Be real. Be consistent. And stop treating posts like press releases.

My advice to those looking to maximize their reach on LinkedIn is to be authentic, be consistent and see every post as the start of a conversation. LinkedIn is about building relationships at its core, so the more genuine and interactive the approach, the stronger the impact.

My key takeaway? Start conversations.

The word conversation appears 10 times in that article.

It’s no wonder Linkedin started showing us how many impressions our comments get. Speaking of which, some of mine are getting thousands — more than some of my posts for the same day — that’s bananas.

So if you’re still writing declarative statements as posts, it’s time to start making sure you’re including some sort of CTA to encourage your network to converse beneath the post, even if it’s just a “what do you think?”

Laura also sat down with Jason Feifer Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, for a 1:1 to talk about “What the Algorithm Really Wants,” a clip of which you can see here.

Naturally, I had to chime in…

Is Linkedin becoming an authenticity platform?

Between Laura’s advice above encouraging brands, companies, and people to “be authentic, be consistent, and start conversation” and this post from Oscar Rodriguez, VP of Product for Trust, talking about how Linkedin is boosting authenticity & credibility, it seems like that’s definitely (one of) Linkedin’s core objectives.

“We at Linkedin believe that authenticity is essentially the next frontier for online identity. In a world where it’s getting increasingly easier to pretend that you’re someone you’re not, we believe authenticity will be a huge differentiator for how members interact with each other on Linkedin and beyond.” - Oscar Rodriguez, VP Product for Trust

Oscar goes on to talk about Linkedin’s mission to bring authenticity everywhere online and to build a seamless identity layer across several other platforms.

Gyanda Sachdeva, VP of Product, says “the future requires us to show up much more authentically and this one feature goes a long way to boosting your credibility meaningfully.”

Now I know a lot of Linkedin stalwarts will call b.s. on this because let’s face it, Linkedin is riddled with growth hackers and engagement pod fraudsters using all sorts of inauthentic shenanigans to build their business, but as I like to say, “when in doubt, zoom out…”

If you are in that segment of my network, consider that we are still in the very early innings of Linkedin as a user generated content platform for the majority of people. Many reading this have likely been on the platform, creating content, building relationships for years, but we’re a very small minority of the total member base.

Linkedin’s own recommendation is for people to take a whopping three actions each week on the platform.

3 per week.

Most of the people I know have done that by 7am on Monday morning. We are not who Linkedin is building for in the future.

Which means we’re ahead of the curve (go us!)

Frankly, I’m pretty pumped that they’re pursuing this strategy. As I said on Linkedin CEO Ryan Roslansky’s post proclaiming that 75 people verify their profiles every minute on Linkedin:

Authenticity has a score now… what’s yours?

French startup, Favikon, which has made a name for itself by "ranking” the world’s creators, has cleverly launched an “authenticity score.” The goal appears to be convincing brands to start paying to verify the authenticity of creators they might want to partner with.

This is an interesting move by the company, especially since many of its Top Creator Lists have historically been filled with big creators we all know aren’t playing by the same rules as everyone else (engagement pods, etc.) It would appear that Favikon is betting its own strategy on authenticity being the most important thing on Linkedin going forward.

I think this is a great initiative and long overdue as Linkedin has been struggling to keep up with the growth hacker ilk for years and anything that helps eradicate that noise from the platform is good in my book.

But I question the accuracy. Mainly because I’m somehow an 81.5 and I am pretty much as authentic as it gets on Linkedin. Unless maybe I’m not and aren’t as self-aware as I like to think I am… Learn more about the authenticity score here.

Hot sauce review time!

This week’s review is of The End Flatline Hot Sauce from Pepper Palace. This was sent to me by a good friend and AI wiz, Lori Mazor (who you should definitely follow).

As you can see from my face, this stuff is no joke…

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Until next time…

Hi5,

LD

🌶️